I was about 10 years old when I watched the Nightly News for the first time and I cried myself to sleep that night. I felt a similar level of despair when I discovered that Eggplant Parmesan is not a healthy dish. Looking back, I think it must have been willful ignorance, because when someone pulled apart the layers of a restaurant’s eggplant parmesan and showed me the breaded and fried pieces of eggplant, it was pretty hard to miss. As they say, “’Denial’ ain’t just a river in Egypt.” Humph.

I used to find eggplants tricky to cook and it wasn’t until Ottolenghi’s fantastic book Plenty that started purchasing and playing with eggplants in the kitchen again. The technique for cooking the eggplants comes from one of his eggplants recipes. The rest of it is easy enough. If you’re feeling really impatient/pressed for time, you could also buy ready made tomato sauce from the store. If you do that, I really recommend throwing in some fresh garlic and cooking the pre-made sauce down a little bit (I find that premade sauces are very watery!). Also, check the back of the tomato sauce can/jar for the ingredients and make sure there is no added sugar.

The resulting eggplant dish is flavorful and hearty without all the deep fried stuff.

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About Elettra

Elettra Wiedemann is the founder of Impatient Foodie, a food site that navigates her desire to marry Slow Food ideals with the realities of fast paced, urban life. Within just a few months of launch in summer of 2014, Impatient Foodie was featured in numerous publications including Vogue, The New York Post, The Daily Mail (UK) Elle US, Elle China, Yahoo Food, Yahoo News, Madame Figaro, and Racked, ManRepeller, and Food & Wine Magazine.